A "journey" involving running in place in the deep end. Quite possibly I've gone off the deep end.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Training log - Week ending 11/13/11

This week was 47 miles of "real running" and 18 "miles" pool running; no swimming this week -- training log is here.

Hah! Theoretically I tapered for the Richmond half-marathon, but I’m not sure I was that well rested. I had the week from hell, including ridiculous amounts of stress and sleep deprival. My workout schedule was cut back pretty drastically, including skipping my normal yoga and pilates classes, swimming drills, and weight training (as well as injury prevention exercises), but I spent the time working feverishly instead. And earned myself some sort of nasty headache/sinus pain/head spinning/achy body thing in the process.

Pretty much the only thing that did go well this week was my running. But that went really well. And since this is a running blog, I guess that makes the week win. Despite the lack of taper and sickness, I scored a significant half-marathon PR and age group win on Saturday morning, and was thrilled. Race report.

Post-race, my body feels like hell - I’m not sure how much of it is from the rolling hills and fast downhill finish of my half, and how much is just general achiness from whatever bug I have (I’m reasonably certain I didn’t use my triceps that much during the race, but they’re killing me).

Regardless of the cause, the response is the same - I’m going to stick to pool-running and swimming until the aches and dizziness subside. Earlier this year, I had several friends run a hilly half-marathon, and then develop injuries in the following week that sidelined them. I want to avoid that path.

Tuesday: In the morning, 11.5 miles, including an abbreviated track workout of 1600, 1200, 800, 400, each with 1/2 distance recovery. Splits were 5:57, 4:25, 2:50, and 80. Followed by a shakeout 20 minutes of pool-running (“2 miles”).

Wednesday: 13 miles, split as 5.5 very easy miles (9:47 pace) and then 7.5 easy miles (8:04 pace). Foam rolling in the evening.

Thursday: Very easy 8.5 miles (8:56 pace), plus drills and strides. Foam rolling in the evening.

Congrats again on the fabulous race, woohoo on a PR and AG win...fantastic! Good call on taking it easy, Halfs can definitely cause apres-race trouble. May your body return to zippy, feeling-good mode asap.

HUGE CONGRATS ON THE PR!! Smart thinking taking it easy after the race. Interesting (maybe) fact: After an ultra, my upper arms are the most sore of everything. I think it's the bouncing over a long period of time. And I don't even have flabby arms.

Full slew of race reports here (from my first in June 2007 to 2010) and here (2011).

workouts

(you can click on the link to see the details)

Pool running conversion

I convert my pool-running into “mileage” with this formula:

1)10 minutes “easy” in the pool equals one mile

2)workouts translate by time into mileage, with the recoveries not counting for mileage.For example, I would normally cover half a mile in 3:00 during an interval workout, and 1.5 miles in 10:00 during a tempo.So 8x3:00 at interval effort is 4 miles, and 10 minutes at tempo effort is 1.5 miles.